How and why did The Raleigh News & Observer get it wrong?

A little after midnight, Jan. 4, I looked at Yahoo's news site and read the AP story on the miners.

I called out to my wife," There's a report they've found 12 of the miners alive, but the mine's owners are not confirming it."

"Let’s pray it's true," she said.

I'm sure about that time and during the next few hours very similar conversations took place between hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who wanted to believe the men were alive but knew the AP had said the reports were unconfirmed.

Recalling how much of MSM Katrina reporting on victims and survivors later proved false no doubt helped many to be extra cautious in what they said about the miners’ fate.

Yet The Raleigh News & Observer used the AP story to produce its Jan. 4 front page, headline story, W. Va. families rejoice as 12 miners found alive.

That The N&O would do that is very troubling; and not excused by the fact that many other MSM news organizations did something similar.

Of course, The N&O didn’t want to get the story wrong; that only makes it more troubling that it did.

This was not a hard story to get right. By right I mean adhering to the old journalist adage: Report only what you know and how you know it.

Example: In answer to my questions this morning, Jan. 6, The Fayetteville Observer’s executive editor for news, Brian Tolley, told me his paper’s Jan. 4 Home edition reported the AP story under the headline, 12 Alive, Families Say. He also said The Observer’s story included the AP statement that the mine owners had not confirmed the men had been found alive.

Contrast that with The N&O’s Jan. 4 story (West edition) that not only headlined as fact that the men were found alive, but also failed to tell readers the mine owners had not confirmed that.

If you're asking how and why The N&O got the story wrong, here’s a sample of what its executive editor for news Melanie Sill is telling readers:

In hindsight, always 20-20, what I think we could have done better was make clear in the headline that this information was preliminary. The story noted that the mine company had not confirmed the reports, but the headline did not. ( JinC readers' note - As stated above, The N&O ( West edition) failed to tell readers "that the mine company had not confirmed the reports.")

We're sorry for putting out an incorrect story, but I think the summary in my post shows that The N&O was working hard to give its readers the news. And I have no apology for that.

Folks who look for any opportunity to bash us can see this as another, but there's a difference between getting bad information from credible sources and being irresponsible.

You can read more of what Sill is telling N&O readers at her blog post,The mine story: From good news to bad.

Not all editors whose papers got the story wrong are giving readers the “bad information from credible sources” excuse. Nor are they saying readers who ask how and why questions are folks “who look for any opportunity to bash us.”

Take a look at what Wichita Eagle editor Sherry Chisenhall said to her readers in her Jan. 4 column, Here's why The Eagle got it wrong:

I'll explain why we (and newspapers across the country) went to press last night with the information we had at the time. But it won't excuse the blunt truth that we violated a basic tenet of journalism today in our printed edition: Report what you know and how you know it.
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We published what we believed to be true at the time. But unfortunately, we failed to make clear exactly where those reports were coming from and that they were not confirmed. Instead, our story and headline reported them as certainty.
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Many newspapers and TV stations reported exactly what we did today. But being wrong in crowded company is still being wrong.

Our commitment to our readers is to tell you exactly what we know and how we know it. Today, we fell short.

I respect editor Chisenhall for acknowledging her newspaper’s mistakes instead of shifting blame onto others. I doubt it was easy for her to write that column. But I think it was very important she did. I’ll soon say why I believe that.

I’ll also be posting more often concerning N&O news reporting.

Meanwhile, we still have the questions of how and why The N&O got the miner story wrong.

Please continue to visit.
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